‘Have yours.’

‘I have. You were half asleep.’

Ansell didn’t know whether he lied or told the truth, but he felt better. He got up quickly to demonstrate his fitness, making a great display of jerking his limbs into life, saying briskly,

‘We’d better get going again.’

MacConnachie chuckled.

‘You won’t rest, will you, kid?’

‘I’m a slave-driver.’

But Ansell was cross at his own weakness, and MacConnachie’s easy acceptance of it. When MacConnachie rose with much simulated resignation, Ansell could have kicked him. Then the buzz of the helicopter’s rotor changed in tone.

‘He’s coming back!’

They fell to the ground and lay still. Having taken such pains to keep out of its sight, they were now equally unable to see it, but, to judge from the sound, it was going away from them and not towards them. At length, when the swishing had died to a whisper, MacConnachie muttered, ‘I’m going to see,’ and wriggled away to the nearest high ground. Ansell waited. When the sound had entirely stopped, MacConnachie returned, walking upright once more.

‘He’s gone.’

‘Refuelling?’

‘I don’t know. Would they need to refuel so soon?’

‘I don’t know.’

MacConnachie scowled.

‘We still don’t know whether he spotted us or not.’

‘Mac, I think you were right. I think he did.’

‘So do I.’

There was a silence, then MacConnachie said,

‘Well, he doesn’t know where we are now. Let’s move.’

But he did. They had gone ten yards when Ansell knew something was terribly wrong; and just before it happened, he knew what it was. He screamed out, ‘Mac! The chopper!’

Then a vast, tumultuous swishing closed suddenly over them as the helicopter came in low, sneak-hitting from behind, less than twenty feet above the ground. They were caught without warning in a rushing maelstrom of dust and swirling air and a great beating of sound, and then the machine was past and turning to come back. MacConnachie shouted, ‘Right! Go right!’

Ansell saw him run, crouching, full tilt in that direction. He put his head down and followed, stretching his aching legs to their limit, struggling not to be left too far behind. The canteen crashed repeatedly against his right thigh.

The helicopter had turned along their new path of flight and now came roaring down on them again. MacConnachie shouted, ‘Left!’ and as they changed direction the chopper came about with them, sucking them once more into the roaring vortex of sound and heated air. The whole earth seemed to buck and tilt under the great black shadows of the sweeping blades and Ansell, stunned by the sheer, monstrous weight of the thing, skittered about, losing his sense of direction.

MacConnachie had broken again to a flank and Ansell went after him, skidding down a narrow defile between two low hills, almost crying out with relief as they escaped the clamorous din and raging wind. This was a terror operation, designed to intimidate and panic them.

They had a tighter turning-circle than the aircraft and MacConnachie jinked again, cutting out a new angle of flight, Ansell at his heels. But the pilot knew his job. After each swoop he pulled up to enlarge his field of vision, giving them no chance to cut back and slip him. As he bore down again, MacConnachie broke right, and he and Ansell ran under the aircraft, bullocking their way through the gauntlet of driven air and buffeting sound, breaking then to their right again and running headlong for a gully out to the side of the two hills, where they threw themselves into the undergrowth as the engine roared and the pilot fought to bring his machine hard about.